A Look at Improbable Cause & The Die Is Cast (Deep Space Nine) 

'The USS Ben Sisko's Mothafuckin Pimp Hand' never fails to give me a shit-eating grin 😂😂

This episode really shows that you have not critiqued Shakespeare until you have done so in the original Cardassian.

The idea of Odo assuming increasingly garish fashions to counter torment Garak is an amusing one, and one I wouldn't mind seeing done in Lower Decks if done more for laughs.

The “boy who cried wolf” bit is some fantastic writing, when I was a kid I caught that scene on tv. This was long before I knew what Trek was but it stuck out. It’s funny, it’s the inverse of the typical “human learns about alien culture” scene, and it tells us a lot about Garak.

The rant about destroying the planet's mantle still makes me laugh out loud.

I love when Garak mentions Major Kira as someome who might want to kill him. Odo retorts with "If she wanted you dead, you would be" and Garak and pretty much everyone instantly agrees.

There was an opportunity for Sisko, sitting in his office and reading his iPad, to suddenly see his baseball shake and fall off his desk ala Jurassic Park as the 20 ships de-cloak out of nowhere.

DS9 was great. I'm sure glad it was the last Star Trek they ever made.

This two parter was pure fire from beginning to end.

It is rather fitting that we never find out who Odo's contact was, given that he's visually based on how Deep Throat, the Watergate informant, was portrayed in All The President's Men (who himself was not revealed until he came forward decades later)

Obvious reason for Sisko only mentioning Odo. Odo is station personnel. Garak is a (presumed) civilian, from a hostile power. The Security Admiral isn't going to compromise everything for a Cardassian. But he *might* for Odo.

I dunno, Colonel Lovok's stiff delivery reminded me of the way the Female Changeling usually speaks. It's a very specific delivery and immediately recognisable as Changeling.

One of the best couple-of-episodes of DS9. it exemplifies what makes DS9 the best ST series and part of why DS9 is the only series I own

These long reviews are great. This is such a terrific two-parter, I never knew and never or could have guessed that these two parts were such distinct entities at one point. You make such a great point about the subtle connections and payoffs. The torture scene was the highlight, both actors and their characters shined. I also love Enabran Tain. A rotund old gentleman in a cardigan surrounded by Romulans and he's the coolest cat in the crib. Although (spoilers) Colonel Lobok turned out to be a changeling, his line to Garak about Garak being a practised liar and him being a practised observer felt very apt to what is at the core of the Obsidian Order and the Tal Shiar. Clandestine organisations like theirs and Section 31 must be capable of both, but would anyone else agree that those are distilled foundations of each individual organisation?

I love these two episodes so much. Garak is such an amazing and fascinating character, and this was yet another instance we really got to see the potential for his character, and all the complex dynamics behind who he is. He can be a coldhearted assassin when necessary, but he can also be caring and humane.

The tale of the boy who cried wolf: a poor risk management aesop.

If you want to get someone into watching Deep Space 9, just show them this two-parter. It has everything that makes DS9 the best Star Trek ever.

You blew your own shop. Circles within circles.

Memory Alpha has an entry for the mysterious informant as "Informant_001" and has some speculation as to his identity

I watched your videos on Garak, Dukat and Odo. I absolutely loved them, I'm very glad to have found this second channel fantastic work all around

Part of the problem is that the firepower of ships varies almost randomly. Blowing up a planet is a lot of work, but people have grown to expect it. Simply destroying it to the crust should be possible in this context. The founders like being liquid and united, so it is not likely they would have some equivalent of a safe room. There would still be founders around but it seems like they don't breed quickly. Maybe they require something from that planet of theirs.

Romulan ships are powered by miniature black holes and the Federation can make a whole planet with the Genesis Device. The Dominion have about the same level of tech, it's probably not that far fetched for them to think there could be a bunker that deep into the planet. Especially considering how paranoid the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar are.

Damn good episodes - so dark. Poor Odo.

Second Sight would be a wonderful episode to do an analysis of.

Garak and Odo, the Super Fascist Friendly Show .

maybe he just threw in the amount of time needed to destroy the mantle as an example of a time frame, and they had no intent of sticking around that long. or maybe changlings can turn to diamond or something lava proof, we do see one flying in space at one point.

Yesssss. Maybe my favourite 2 parter in all of Trek.

I didn't realize how villainous Garak seems at times in this episode. Of course, he is my favorite DS9 character and I certainly don't think of him as a villain.

That device that prevents shapeshifters from changing form is impressive. It's too bad there aren't any other situations where they could've used that technology. Like, for the whole rest of the series they never once had an issue that could have been solved if Garak had only passed that technology along to the Federation.

4:14 😂 David Mitchell! I bow before your erudition!

Prigozin didn’t realize that the die was cast when he marched on Moscow.

I actually find that the ships being able to so easily destroy a planet to be reasonable. Again, back in Kirk's day they were able to rig up a planet buster in a few minutes. The issue, as noted several times in the franchise, is that you don't give the ground troops weapons that are so strong that if they explode they take out whole companies at once. I seem to remember one of the Star Fleet Academy Novels(Trek High School type things) actually talked about this in detail during one of them(I think Picard's, but don't quote me it's been 20 years). Basically, their guns are exactly as powerful as they need to be to be useful against other ground troops, no more since anything more they could very easily get themselves killed. But those ships? We've seen them be able to severely damage planets from orbit before(And also sometimes just fluff stuff, like that time when Voyager fired a photon torpedo at a ship in a city and it...barely seemed to cause the ship to list a bit). Anyway, a full on warship, with the best weapons the two black ops groups could equip them with? I can see them able to seriously destroy a planet with no defenses.

I have nothing against cliches so long is good. 🙂 I rewatched the episode last week and I love it. ❤️

27:40 "I recognize that the Council has made its decision, but, as its a stupid ass decision I have decided to ignore it"

Where’d that twelves year old watchman clip from

Garak reminds me of Varys on GoT

Garak was one of the best character's on the show. Andrew did a Great job

Nice phrase "alea jacta est" by the way, would be have been nice, since there are some other episode names in Latin 🖖🤓

Stories like these are why DS9 is the best Star Trek.

This two-parter (and the Garak & Enebran Tain two-parter follow-up in a later season) is among the brilliant Garak episodes, and among the best DS9 episodes in general. And the reason why Garak is still one of my favorite Star Trek characters. I was sad when in later seasons of DS9, the writers suddely ended the Garak/Bashir bromance, split them up, had Bashir have another bromance with O'Brian and tried to "heterosexualize" Garak by forcing him into scenes with Gul Ducat's half-Cardassian daughter who was several decades younger than Garak. (Which is why Andrew Robinson always played this relationship as a "fatherly mentor" to her.) Years later, the script writers revealed in interviews that Paramount execs had put pressure on them to split up that "homoerotic" relationship between Bashir and Garak, when the writers _and_ both actors had deliberately played up that angle, trying to get around Paramount's "no gays!" sentiment which ironically went against the late Roddenberry's wish he could have featured a homoseuxal couple in Star Trek in his lifetime. (TNG back in the 1990s tried a few times with guest characters but still had to play it safe.) Years later, when Andrew Robinson wrote a DS9 novel _A Stitch In Time_ about Garak on Cardassia, set in the time after the Dominion war and in the past in flashbacks, he wrote in the author's foreword that he had regarded Garak to be bisexual and tried to play him like that from the start, and that he and Alexander Siddig had both wanted for Garak and Bashir to be in a deeper relationship, but ultimately had not been allowed to.

Ok has anyone EVER asked WHY THE FUCK the boy has called wolf ninety-fucking-eight times?

Great breakdown.👍

I stopped watching most of these star trek reviews but still find some entertainment in ds9 from time to time. Might be Rene Auberjonois is just that great an actor.

I love all sfdebris videos!

Look, it's hard not to be a Bashir/Garak fan when the list of Bashir/Garak fans *includes Siddig and Robinson themselves*

On the one hand, I could theoretically see A/M and harnessed miniature black holes, both of which the Romulans have, achieving that kind of destruction, but like you said, there's only 20 ships here, and if the Romulans really are sitting on that kind of firepower, why isn't it shown anywhere else? Where was that kind of firepower blowing Jem Ha'Dar ships to dust in the rest of the war?

Why am I not surprised there are people who ship the doc with the tailor... smh

Another reason why armor (which is made of matter) should supposedly be pointless against such weapons if the shields go down. Considering the energies involved, melting an entire planet's crust with one ship is more than possible, it would just take a few days. A fleet can get it done much quicker, so vaporizing the mantle doesn't seem far-fetched. I don't see what's so surprising if you accept what you've seen the weapons do in other instances. Supposedly, the ships generate power in the terawatt range but as portrayed on multiple occasions, it's much more like the yottawatt range. Phasers have an effective range of 300,000km, enough to burn a hole through a gas giant. Then in other instances, ablative "armor" evaporates slowly enough to be replaced. Maybe if their structural materials were constructed with femto-technology, they could withstand what gets thrown at them using unknown meta-properties to avoid becoming quark-gluon plasma but this really, REALLY stretches probability.

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Favorite two-parter next to the Paradise Lost episodes.